1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an electrical insulating film treating agent for an electrical steel sheet having a high space factor, excellent weldability and punchability before annealing, and further having sticking resistance at the time of annealing and excellent corrosion resistance, lubricating property, adhesion, etc., after annealing, and to an insulating film treating method using the treating agent.
2. Description of the Related Art
When a non-oriented electrical steel sheet is used for an iron core of a motor or a transformer, the sheet is first punched out into a predetermined shape and is then subjected to stress relief annealing. Next, a predetermined number of such steel sheets are stacked and then bonded by welding, caulking, bonding, etc., to form a stacked core, as is well known in the art.
Generally, an electrical insulating film is formed on the surface of the non-oriented electrical steel sheet. In order to obtain excellent core characteristics and machinability, it is very important for this insulating film to have high sticking resistance at the time of annealing and excellent corrosion resistance and lubricating property after annealing, in addition to the required characteristics such as corrosion resistance, weldability, adhesion, high space factor, etc., besides the insulating property.
Inorganic type, organic type and inorganic-organic type insulating films are known in the past as the electrical insulating film for the non-oriented electrical steel sheet. In comparison with the organic type and organic-inorganic mixture type films, the inorganic type insulating film has higher heat resistance and superior lubricating property after stress relief annealing, but its punchability is inferior. On the other hand, the organic type insulating film has excellent punchability and adhesion, but the film is likely to be partially decomposed and burn out by stress relief annealing. In other words, since adhesion after stress relief is very low, the film cannot withstand practical use. The inorganic-organic type film agent has been developed in order to solve the drawbacks in the film comprising the inorganic components alone and the film comprising the organic components alone, and has been used most generally at present. As an example of the inorganic-organic mixture type insulating film, Japanese Examined Patent Publication (Kokoku) No. 50-15013 proposes an insulating film formation method having excellent film characteristics such as a high space factor, high adhesion, punchability, etc., and capable of maintaining excellent film characteristics even after stress relief annealing, by using a treating solution comprising a dichromate and an organic resin emulsion of vinyl acetate, butadiene-styrene copolymer, acrylic resin, etc., as the principal components. Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 5-78855 proposes an insulating film agent for an electromagnetic steel sheet comprising an aqueous solution prepared by mixing an inorganic type aqueous solution containing 100 to 350 g/l of aluminum dihydrogenphosphate, calculated in terms of P.sub.2 O.sub.5, and a synthetic resin emulsion having a pH of 1 to 3, in such a manner that volatile components of the latter accounts for 10 to 40 wt % on the basis of the total amount of volatile components of both of them, as an insulating film agent which is different from the component system of the prior art reference described above and which does not contain the chromate. Furthermore, this reference proposes an insulating film formation composition for an electrical steel sheet prepared by mixing an inorganic type aqueous solution containing 100 to 350 g/l of aluminum dihydrogenphosphate, calculated as P.sub.2 O.sub.5, and a synthetic resin emulsion having a pH of 1 to 3, in such a manner that volatile components of the latter accounts for 10 to 50 wt % on the basis of the total amount of volatile component of both of them, and adding 5 to 20 parts by weight, on the basis of 100 parts by weight of the total volatile components of the mixed aqueous solution, of cross-linkable resin granular powder having a mean grain size of 5 to 15 .mu.m. The reference invention describes that the resin emulsion having a pH of 1 to 3 is used so as to improve stability in an acidic mixed solution, and the coarse grain powdery resin is used so as to form concavo-convexities on the film surface and to improve weldability by improving air permeability at the time of welding.
For the film characteristics of the non-oriented electrical steel sheet having the electrical insulating film having excellent film characteristics, which is disclosed in Japanese Examined Patent Publication (Kokoku) No. 50-15013 described above, punchability before annealing is good but a drop in the insulating property due to some residual film matter is observed after annealing, and as to the film characteristics after stress relief annealing, heat resistance, corrosion resistance, lubricating property, etc., are not sufficient and further improvements must yet be achieved.
The drawbacks with the technology of Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 5-78855 are as follows. When the coarse grain powdery resin is added to the mixed solution of the inorganic component and the emulsion resin, aggregation of the powdery resin is unavoidable, dispersion of uniform particles is difficult, and a drop in the space factor occurs because the grain size of the coarse grain resin powder is great. Another critical problem is that peel and fall-off of carbides are likely to occur after annealing due to the carbonization reaction of the coarse grain resin aggregates. The non-uniform surface condition, which is brought forth by the aggregation of the coarse grain resin, invites unstability of lubricating property, corrosion resistance, insulating property, and so forth. Accordingly, the technology described in this prior art reference cannot yet be said entirely satisfactory.
As described above, when the non-oriented electrical steel sheet is used for the iron core of the motor or the like, the steel sheet is first punched out into the predetermined shape and stress relief annealing is then carried out. Thereafter, a predetermined number of the steel sheets thus punched out are stacked and bonded by welding, caulking, bonding, etc., to obtain the stacked iron core. Because automation has made a remarkable progress in such a production process in recent years, the steel sheets after stress relief annealing must have good lubricating property on a guide during the stacking process and must also have good mutual lubricating property and caulkability.
If the steel sheet has low lubricating property, it does not smoothly move on the guide during the production process and flaws are likely to occur on the surface or peeling of the film occurs. On the other hand, when the sections of a predetermined number of punched sheets are aligned by an automatic correction machine at the time of stacking of the core, the sections of the punched sheets are damaged or buckling occurs. Because the heat resistance is not sufficient, deterioration of the core characteristics becomes a problem due to the occurrence of rust during the use of the annealed material.